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One Shalot (Take half a pound of the white)
Take half a pound of the white meat of a fowl, six mushrooms, pepper and salt; pound these in a mortar and pass through a hair-sieve, add to it a gill and a half of whipped cream and the gill of Béchamel sauce. Take the beards off the oysters, cut each one in half, fry the chopped shalot in the butter, add the curry sauce and half a gill of cream, cook this, then stir in the oysters, mix well and add a little salt and cayenne. Grease the Bouchée moulds, line well with the cream of chicken; put some of the oyster mixture in the middle, cover each with more chicken cream, and steam very steadily for fifteen minutes. Serve very hot with some good Suprême sauce poured round the bouchées.
This is an Edwardian mousseline forcemeat: raw chicken pounded with cream, moulded around a curried oyster filling and steamed. The technique is straightforward once the temperatures and vessels are clear.
- Keep everything coldThe hinge of the dish is emulsion: raw chicken breast, mushrooms and cream will only hold together if the meat, the cream and the bowl are thoroughly chilled. If the mixture warms while being worked it will separate in the mould and weep butterfat when steamed.
- GillsIn a British kitchen of this period a gill is 5 imperial fl oz (about 142 ml). A gill and a half of whipped cream is therefore about 7 1/2 fl oz of whipped volume, and the Bechamel is another 5 fl oz. American readers working from a 4 fl oz gill will end up with a noticeably firmer forcemeat.
- Bouchee mouldsSince they are greased and steamed rather than baked, these are evidently small metal dariole or timbale moulds rather than pastry cases; buttered ramekins do the same job. Line the sides and base with a layer of chicken cream about 1 cm thick, fill, then cap.
- Hair-sieveA fine drum sieve or tamis. A food processor will do the pounding, but push the puree through a fine-mesh sieve afterwards regardless, or the finished cream will be grainy with sinew.
- The oystersBeard means the dark frill of gills around the edge, which is tough. Once the curry sauce and cream are hot, fold the halved oysters in and take the pan off the heat immediately; they will finish cooking inside the mould. Anything longer and they turn to rubber.
- SteamingVery steadily means barely trembling water, not a rolling boil, with the moulds covered so condensation does not pool on top. The recipe's fifteen minutes suits small moulds; larger ones will need longer. They are done when the centre feels set and springs back.
- The saucesBechamel here is a thick, well-reduced white sauce used as a binder, not a pouring sauce. Supreme is a chicken veloute finished with cream. The curry sauce is presumably one of the book's own recipes, most likely a roux-based sauce flavoured with curry powder rather than an Indian gravy.
- Quantities not givenThe oysters, butter and curry sauce are left unmeasured. For half a pound of chicken, six to eight oysters, a knob of butter and two or three tablespoons of curry sauce keep the filling from overwhelming the mousseline.
- YieldProbably around half a dozen small moulds, served as a hot entree course.
Mousseline forcemeat of this kind was a mainstay of the grand entree course in late Victorian and Edwardian professional cookery: white meat pounded with cream, moulded, gently steamed and sauced, prized precisely because it demanded skill and equipment that only a well-staffed kitchen possessed. The pairing of chicken with oysters was thoroughly conventional, oysters being used as a savoury filling much as truffle or foie gras were used higher up the scale. The curry sauce marks the period too: commercially blended curry powder was by this date a familiar seasoning in British kitchens, deployed as one flavour note among many rather than as the point of the dish.